Review: Prudence

Prudence by Gail Carriger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After finishing the Parasol Protectorate series, I was excited to jump into more of the Parasol world. Having already read and enjoyed the Finishing School arc, I dived into The Custard Protocol series. I was super excited to see what this series would bring, really excited to see how things had developed after the ending of the Parasol Protectorate series.

I’ll be completely honest and say Prudence is my least favourite Carriger read. For a decent proportion of the book, I contemplated giving this a three star rating. I’m sure you can imagine my dismay at the mere notion. Fortunately, the book managed to turn itself around. This one is more of a three-point-five star rating, but I decided to round up (I will explain why shortly)

My biggest issue with this book is how long it took me before I was actually pulled into the story. I know the same thing happened with Soulless, but with Soulless the pull happened much quicker. A very large part of Prudence was spent hoping things would start happening. We spend so much time talking about clothing and other nonsensical things that I grew bored. Whilst I do not mind these things in the background (as they always are in Carriger novels), I’d much rather these things remained in the background. Action first, talk of fashion and food second.

Another thing that prevented me from being pulled into the story completely was the characters. I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy them much at all. They all seemed to be cheap caricatures of their parents. Having read both the Parasol Protectorate series and the Finishing School series, I know Carriger is capable of creating a cast of entertaining characters. Such was not the case with this one. I came to like some of the characters later in the book, but these characters pale in comparison to the Parasol Protectorate and Finishing School casts.

What saved the book for me was the new possibilities that have been opened for the world. I’ve really enjoyed Carriger’s world building from the start, and I was quite surprised by where this one took us. So many new opportunities have been opened up by the introductions made in this series, and I’m so excited to see what Carriger brings to the world now she is moving on beyond the known.

Whilst I wasn’t crazy about this one, the ending certainly left me wanting to pick up the next book to see where things would head.

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